Bastakia Quarter

One of the good things, apart from the obvious benefits of having friends visiting, is that we get to see parts of Dubai we don't go to in our normal routine. I think it's called touristing.

Today Naime and Thomas had finally finished sleeping off their busy German lives and we went in search of old Dubai. After a short walk along the Creek we turned into an unassuming-looking car park to find a whole neighbourhood of 19th century houses. They were initially build by Iranian traders who settled here because business was good, the name of the area stemming from the Southern Iranian district of Bastak.

Houses in the Bastakia Quarter near the Creek

The houses are designed in the local style with wind towers and an inner courtyard, all aiming to keep the interiors and their inhabitants cool. Wind towers are an ingenious form of early air conditioning. It uses convection to draw in cold air and breezes from the outside and funnels them into the room below, thus creating a pleasant atmosphere even on very hot days. The rooms are arranged around a central courtyard, usually planted with a tree for extra shade or featuring a fountain. The courtyard would be surrounded by covered walkways and there was often a covered corridor on the first floor as well. The outside walls were thick to keep out the heat and the sand, also so that the house could be extended upwards easily, should the family grow.

Courtyard and Walkways inside a Traditional House

Solar Power Arrives

Solar power may be used to run a new generation of abras on the creek.

Abras are the small boats that ply across the creek which cuts Dubai in half. They are used by thousands of people every day to get about their business, as they are cheap at 25 fils (2 pence or 3 Eurocent) and easy. There are only two bridges and one road tunnel crossing the creek, these are mainly geared for car traffic and are always complete bottlenecks anyway. Much easier to catch one of these little boats, as long as one is nimble enough to get on one.

Now the government is going to build two more abra stations to add to the four existing ones. At the same time they have contracted an unspecified private firm to look into adding solar power while keeping the traditional look of the boats with their simple seating and fabric-covered shelters. The project is to have a trial run next year sometime.

Christmas, Visitors and Rain

Naime and Thomas are here from Germany, our very first true tourist trippers, as opposed to the previous visitors who were here on business. And all we can offer them is rain!

After all the boasting of fine blue skies every day and no need for cardigans we find ourselves in a low-pressure system coming from Bahrain which has brought sand storms, low visibility and even rain for three days now. It's not so much cold, although 17ºC is freezing in our book nowadays, but miserable like a shivery March in England, grey skies and blustery showers. Very embarrassing. The newspapers are of course full of pictures of rainy streets and advice for safe driving in a sand storm, as the weather is always big news here.